Thinking about having a box made over at Ponoko or some other maker? Not sure how to make your perfect press-fit or T-slot acrylic enclosure? Below are the various resources I found on the subject while looking into it myself.
Come across the most interesting things when looking for random information…. Like this video:
Hmmm… If only I had a place to put my table saw. At some point I need to try this, but it’ll have to wait until after I have the thing outta storage…
S.
Like my rubber feet?
My boards arrived on Friday, and I was excited. I’ve had the TuneConsole prototype kicking around on my desk, and it really is useful. My number one complaint with it is that I keep knocking the pushbuttons off the breadboard; they just don’t stay down.
But like I said, my boards are here.
It’s time to build the real thing!
As I said in my original post on TuneConsole, ordering a PCB for this project was something of an adventure. I’m by no means experienced in this sort of thing; I usually use ExpressPCB, which has its own way of doing things. Going to Gerber was something I was a little leery of.
Using dedicated software from your chosen board house gives you a feeling of safety that a package like EAGLE tends to lack.
I mean, c’mon, how much more annoying could Cadsoft possibly make the CAM processor dialog? I’m building up a pretty serious rant when it comes to that program. Are we all really desperate enough to use EAGLE just ’cause it’s free?
Oh wait, we are!
But I digress. This post is supposed to be about Advanced Circuits…
My boards arrived yesterday for the TuneConsole, as expected. Not sure why the UPS guy sat outside the house for a good twenty minutes before delivering my package, but whatever. UPS guys are weird.
I excitedly ripped into the package and found that the contents were exactly as expected. An invoice, a handy little Advanced Circuits post-it pad, a survey form, a bag of popcorn, and five newly-minted printed circuit boards.
Whoa, wait a minute here.
Popcorn?!
Um, yeah. More on the quality later once I’ve wrapped my head around Advanced Circuits’ odd choice of packing materials…
S.
When it comes to the right way to rate songs in your iTunes library, there’s been tons of discussion over the years. For me, though, the situation is much more basic: why would I bother to rate my songs when iTunes is buried under a plethora of terminal sessions, Xcode windows, and other stuff?
It’s inconvenient, and there has to be a solution to this problem!
Such was my thinking a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been having a rather serious urge to hack on hardware lately, and this seemed like a nice, simple project to keep me busy. I also had a spare Arduino sitting around, so what could be easier? I mean, it’s only five or ten minutes worth of hacking!
Right?
Need tips for your Xytronic 379 soldering station?
I picked one up a couple of years ago at All Electronics for around $50. It’s a good little temperature controlled station and fits most of my needs. Now I want to try my hand at some surface mount work, however, and the tip it came with just won’t cut it. The little buggers are hard to find, too.
Fortunately for me, this guy – who runs what appears to be an investment site – for some reason decided to post about his soldering iron back in 2008. Turns out, the 379 will accept Hakko 900M tips. T18 tips are compatible with the 900M’s, so by extension…
A quick Fry’s trip later and I have a cheap test tip – and guess what: it works!
YMMV, but if you have one of these, it’ll probably work for you also.
This article is referenced in a number of places, most notably on SparkFun’s “Pitching Your Product” tutorial. It’s an interesting (and recommended) read for anyone who wants to start a business selling the stuff they make.
Something to think about if I ever build something worth selling…
Dangerous Prototypes pointed out this app note over at Atmel; I assume that most of this applies to any platform, not just theirs. Too bad I saw it after I already had boards made.
Guess I’ll have to live with my USB cable acting like an antenna…
I found this article over on neowin.net. It’s a surprisingly calm and collected view of the differences between Mountain Lion and Windows 8; something I wasn’t expecting at all with a site that has ‘win’ in the name. They make some good points (both positive and negative), and apart from an admittedly amusing pot shot over icon design at the end, it’s pretty fair, all things considered.
It actually makes me wonder what Windows 8 will bring. If Metro is even half as obnoxious as the XBox, I’ll probably have to start advertising myself as a professional Mac coder rather than a ‘net geek. There’ll be more work than the current crop can handle.
Maybe I should dig up a beta somewhere just to see how bad it’s going to get…
