Month: February 2013

Projects – Hobbybotics Reflow Controller Quad V1.0

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I’ve been working on a redesign of the original reflow controller.  Here are the features for the new board:

  1. Four MAX31855 Type-K Thermocouple interfaces
  2. DS3234 Real Time Clock with battery backup
  3. FT231x USB
  4. XBee or Bluetooth Wireless
  5. MCP23008 I/O Expanders for 2-wire expanded communication
  6. ULN2803 Darlington buffered output relay/SSR control
  7. Internal or external micro SD interface
  8. External LCD I2C interface/input
  9. ATMega 1284P TQFP AVR with Arduino bootloader
  10. 16 MHz Crystal

Take a look at the new board:

2013-02-19 01.32.48_1024x768

2013-02-19 01.36.35_1024x768

download

 I’ll post more on this project in the coming days.  I’ll be offering this project as a full kit for those who are interested.

EEWeb Site of the Day

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EEWebHobbybotics will be the Electrical Engineering Community (EEWeb) featured site of the day on Friday 22 February, 2013.  I have been to the site on numerous occasions but was not aware of the user engineering blog section.  there is a lot of good resources available for experienced engineers and hobbyist alike.  EEWeb also provides a free circuit simulation tool know as PartSim.

PartSim-Sidebar-Graphic“PartSim is a free and easy to use circuit simulator that runs in your web browser.”

A plus for PartSim is the integrated Bill Of Materials (B.O.M) that allows one to assign Digikey part numbers to their designs.  I’ll definitely add the site to my “Daily View List” and give the circuit simulator a whirl.  Hey, it might save me from some of the design mistakes I tend to discover after I have already sent board files off to be produced.