Blog posts by Brom

Brom

United Kingdom

Power Planes in DesignSpark PCB

29 Jul 2011

The use of planes in Multilayer PCB's can offer a designer advantages in terms of good grounding for noise, high speed design, reducing length and impedance on VCC traces and EMC considerations. DesignSpark PCB with the use of the "Translate to PCB" Wizard provides an easy way to add and assign extra layers to a PCB. This example shows a simple progress from a 2 to 4 layer board using VCC and GND planes. Layers can also be added at the PCB stage by use of the technolgy files.

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4674 reads
Theme: DesignSpark PCB

Brom

United Kingdom

MBED Workshops!

3 Nov 2010

Rapid Prototyping with 32-bit Microcontrollers

These workshops brought to you by the ESP KTN Electronics Knowledge Centre in partnership with RS Components and ARM/NXP, are aimed at demonstrating how easy it can be to rapidly prototype a new idea for an electronic product using sophisticated and powerful 32-bit microcontrollers with rich functionality, complex I/O capabilities and great performance. Read more

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1 comment
2175 reads
Theme: MBED

Brom

United Kingdom

New MSP430 LaunchPad schematic files

1 Nov 2010

In line with our current promotion of the new MSP430 Launchpad from Texas Instruments we are pleased to deliver the schematic files for the board for use with the free Design Spark PCB Tool.

See link below

http://www.designspark.com/knowledge/msp430-launch-pad-schematics

Also available via the TI LAUNCHPAD Design Centre below

http://www.designspark.com/theme/ti-launchpad Read more

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3042 reads
Theme: TI Launchpad (MSP 430)

Brom

United Kingdom

MSP430 LaunchPad giveaway at Electronica

29 Oct 2010

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2118 reads
Theme: TI Launchpad (MSP 430)

Brom

United Kingdom

TI LaunchPad

28 Oct 2010

Welcome to the new blog theme on the TI Launchpad.

I just received mine today and am looking forward to getting it fired up. I would like to invite all who get their hands on one of these boards to share their experiences with it. They really look good and amazing for the price! Below is a quick overview of what it is. Also check out the new Design Centre in Design Spark for lots of information, user guide, code examples etc.

What is LaunchPad? Read more

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Brom

United Kingdom

MBED let loose on ARDUINO shields

6 Oct 2010

From the MBED site

Hack-a-day described mbed as "Arduino. On steroids. With claws and fangs.". The Arduino is a great platform and has rightly built up a strong following of tinkerers. What it has also done is stimulated a lot of bolt-on technologies to become accessible in the form of "shields". Well, it seems someone has been busy making a breakout to let the power of mbed loose on any of these great shields too...

Here is what turned up on twitter today:

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1937 reads
Theme: MBED

Brom

United Kingdom

New MBED Breakout board from Cool Components

6 Oct 2010

It doesn't do anything clever, but it makes connecting a few crucial pluggable things to the mbed much easier.

Here's a nice picture :

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2607 reads
Theme: MBED

Brom

United Kingdom

Robots in Space

30 Sep 2010

Robonaught 2 is soon the be the first humanoid robot in space. R2 is scheduled to blast off on November 1st aboard the Space Shuttle, Discovery. Equipped with the most articulate robot hands (four fingers and a thumb) and 3D Vision, R2 is designed to handle the more mundane tasks in the orbiting lab.

R2 has been designed by NASA and GM.

Check out the video below, in particular when R2 writes on paper.

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