12V Phone Charger v2.0

Just a couple of days after the Great Tohoku Earthquake, everybody at Tokyo HackerSpace was working on projects of their own. This is a project that began at that time but was stalled due to lots of reasons. We might be late for people of Tohoku, but the project is ready for manufacturing for other disasters around the world.

v2.0 board, soldered

One problem we saw was that people were in these shelters without any type of communication. Sure they had cellphones but cellular system was down and charging their phones impossible as all had left their chargers at home. We couldn’t have done anything about cellular system but there was chance that we could help them charge their cellphones.

Using Bus Pirate with Arduino IDE

Yesterday, a friend from Tokyo HackerSpace said that he bought an DIY Arduino kit. The problem is that the ATmega168P does not come with the required bootloader. Just the same day I bought two FreakDuino boards and tried to use them to flash the bootloader with no luck. FreakDuino boards had no problem as I tested the same approach using other Arduino type boards available at the hackerspace.

This morning an idea popped up in my mind to use the Bus Pirate with avrdude. I managed to program but something was off because I was not able to connect to the bootloader. I can use Bus Pirate with avrdude directly as it’s firmware can interact with avrdude. “How about embedding it into Arduino IDE?” was the question in my mind now.

While messing around the directory of Arduino IDE, I found some text files and answer to my question lies in one of them: programmers.txt

Just add these three lines to it and you are good to go (note: you might need root privileges for Linux)

buspirate.name=The Bus Pirate
buspirate.communication=serial
buspirate.protocol=buspirate

Enjoy!

MTM06 video tour

On the first day, we made a video tour of MTM06 with Nick Farr of Hackers on a Plane. The plan was to make a short 3 minute video but it turned out to an 11 minute video. Check it out!

MTM06 is over

Make: Tokyo Meeting 06 was an eye opening experience. Lots of cool stuff to look at & play with, speaking with fellow geeks about their projects (sometimes in Japanese, a really bad one ) and taking lots of pictures and a couple of videos. I am still thinking about which photo best describes this event, and there are so many! I think I will go with the stuff I bought and got for free.

MTM06 loot

Make: Tokyo Meeting 06

I will be attending the Make: Tokyo Meeting 06 on November 20 & 21st at Tokyo Institute of Technology, O-okayama Campus. If you manage to come, just drop by Tokyo Hackerspace table (shared with Hackers on a Plane) and lets share ideas!

TK-1315LA review and connection guide

I recently purchased a TK-1315LA GPS module and an MMCX antenna set from here. My first test results were good and I am planning to use it in a future project (involving robots of course!). It is a really tiny (L42.0 x W14.0 x H9.2mm) 3.3volt GPS module that tracks up to 20 satellites. The default data output is NMEA0184 V3.00, RTCM formatted data by UART @ 9600bps, 8N1.

GPS module and Bus Pirate connection

PIC32 Ethernet Starter Kit review

I have attended the PIC32 Ethernet Starter Kit RoadTest event, won a kit and here is my review. The PIC32 Ethernet Starter Kit is the 3rd version of a series of PIC32 starter kits. This is not my first time for working with Ethernet enabled microcontrollers but a first for PIC32 family.

Package Content

The kit came in a black plastic box which resembles a DVD box. The contents were:

• PIC32 Ethernet Starter Kit development board
• USB Mini-B to full-sized A cable – USB debug cable to debug and power the board
• USB Micro-B to full-sized A cable – PIC32 USB cable to communicate with the PIC32 USB port
• RJ-45 CAT5 Ethernet patch cable – Ethernet CAT5 cable to communicate with the PIC32 Ethernet port
• Software CD
• Registration card

Package contents

Jobs getting piled up…

I was pretty busy, and had to delay some of the things I had to do. But they are all getting piled up, so I have to start somewhere! These are the updates I have in mind:

• PIC32 Ethernet Starter Kit review
• GPS module review and BusPirate connection guide
• C30 v3.23b Linux import has to get finished and guide has to be updated

There are also a few projects coming along with other contributors. Also a few are in my draft book, waiting for parts, tools, time etc. Hopefully I will finish the list and start them soon.

element14 Merchandise

I won element14′s Birthday Merchandise draw recently and I found a package in my post box 2 days ago. The contents were a folder, a notebook (all pages are a to-do list), a nice pen and a 2GB USB Flash drive. You can find the pictures below.

All merchandise was inside the folder to the left.

Pages of the notebook and the opened up flash drive.

I will take these to my laboratory and use the notebook to take notes about all the stuff I have to do and the flash drive to store my electronics related work and personal projects.

Thanks and happy birthday element14!

Bento Trial(s)

Bento is some kind of a take-out meal. You can buy them in convenience stores (combini), supermarkets or special bento shops. But it’s origin is home prepared versions which I’m trying to master. We usually buy bento with my friends and eat under sakura trees (see: o-hanami) for lunch but as I usually make a little extra for each dinner, I thought I should prepare something and bring that to school. I recently bought myself a bento box with two separate containers, in one I can put rice (read gohan) and to the other container I can put other stuff. My first trial was not that much of a success but here is my second trial:

Home prepared bento

As you can see one container is filled with rice and the little aluminum package contains condiment for the rice which is some kind of a sesame mix. At the other container there is edamame (boiled soy beans), potato salad with a little mayo and mustard, fried chicken pieces (pre-cut as I won’t be carrying a knife ) and little tomatoes.

Each bento should contain food in five colors for a balanced diet: White, black, yellow, red and green. White is rice and black is sesame or nori for rice and the other colors are anything. As you can see, I have white rice, black sesame condiment, yellow potato salad, red tomatoes plus chicken (probably) and green edamame. Plus there is a rule for portions which is 3 parts rice, 1 part protein and 2 parts vegetables. So my bento is probably balanced that way also.

Can’t wait to eat this tomorrow at lunch!