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I was going to have a Black Friday sale anyway, but now I have one more reason for it, and it's an embarrassing one: the latest batch of PCBs have a little flaw, but they can be easily fixed. So, until I run out of them, both the Wise Clock 4 kit and the Complete Wise Clock 4 kit  will be $10 less, for $57 and $115 respectively. (As always, I also offer discounts for multiple units, just ask.) The photos below show a few ways to fix it. Basically, the GND terminal of the USB connector is disconnected from the board's ground. The short wire re-connects them again. The sleekest way would be on the bottom, using a resistor terminal inserted together with the 2x8-pin female header, as shown in the photo below. Solder the other end together with the 6-pin FTDI connector. Here is the story of how this happened. The PCB used to be 101.2 mm in length. That was 1.2 mm longer than the 10 cm limit imposed when using Seeedstudio's PCB prototyping service. I never had a problem before,

Based on this photo from BroHogan's gallery of Geiger counters, it was supposed to be a simple encasing using Adafruit's Arduino enclosure . Everything looked neat and clean inside, even with room to spare. I wanted to use LiPo instead of AAA batteries, to avoid opening and closing the device every so often. This required the use of a LiPo charger, for which I picked the one I already had, the seeedstudio's  LiPo Rider . I spent countless hours trying to put this puzzle together: only 4 places for screws; small(ish) charger board must to be solidly anchored to the case (since an USB cable will be plugged in frequently), yet it does not have any hole for screws; 6 wires (battery, V out, switch) must be soldered to the charger SMD board; 12 wires need to connect the Geiger board to the LCD, on the other half of the case; trim pot suspended somewhere (since there is no room for it on the PCB); power switch to fit in the rectangular opening of the bottom ; When I thought I fig

Honestly, one of the reasons behind my latest infatuation with Nixie tube clocks is trying to understand why so many people got so fascinated so quickly and so suddenly with them, although they are not cheap, and although they simply show the time with 4, sometimes 6, digits. In any case, I'm in the bandwagon now. I designed an Arduinix(TM) variant, based on my previous observations . One of the main differences is that the components sit low on the board, so that a "tube shield" can be plugged on top, similar to akafugu's VFD modular clock . The top "tube shield" can host (at least in theory) up to six IN-2 or four IN-17 (four IN-12 would not fit). For the "IN-2 tube shield", I downloaded and used the eagle library called "russian-nixies.lbr". Guess what? For the digits to be shown vertically, the IN-2 part needs to be rotated about 45 degrees clockwise. I did not know that until I got my IN-2 tubes. Essentially, the IN-2 tube shield I

My young friend Rami left his comfortable and safe permanent job with a solid consulting company to start his own business, mainly writing apps for mobile devices. His first app is " Deep Sleep Alarm " for iPhone, available for download in the App Store. The app is free, with nice graphics and useful functionality, basically making sure you are not "cheating" when  waking up :)  Please give it a try. He is currently working on the Android version. Rami, keep up the great work!

For "unknown" reasons, these days things don't move as fast as they used to. I have a dozen or so unfinished projects on my desk, most of them waiting for parts to arrive. And usually and unfortunately, when I get the long awaited part, something else is missing... or not fitting,... or not working. Today I was finally able to finish the " Open Source Nixie Tube Shield ", for which I pledged $15 on kickstarter in return for the PCB. Without paying attention to the schematic (was it even published before the campaign ended?), I thought it was just another variation of the same Nixie theme, which it really was. I expected to have all parts on hand already, including the Nixie K155ID1 driver Russian IC. Surprise! Instead, the circuit uses CD4028 decoder plus HV transistors. And that's where the 4 week wait is coming from. I liked the compactness of the board even before I soldered the almost 100 components. But I was a bit disappointed when I realized the shi