John Alexander's Blog

Macro - The art of seeing clearly!

Problemchild

I'm sure many of us here are getting long enough in the tooth that we need to move PCBs and other parts away from you in order to focus on them.Conversely or should I say perversely the world is intent in puting millions of components on boards that ...
- 3 Aug 2013
FPGA Primer from Dave

Problemchild

Don't think Dave Jones really needs me pushing his blog (Excellent BTW) but I particularly liked his"First of a series" Primer on FPGA technologies. Obviously he hasn't gone into too much detail or vendor specific stuff but it's a great start non the...
- 3 Aug 2013
Build a 10W FM Transmitter Howto

Problemchild

A Mere 499990 watts less than the monster I mentioned a bit a go but proabably a bit easier to actually construct www.youtube.com/watch Fun idea technology with a social context. From FreeRadio.org, I suppose the le...
- 2 Aug 2013
Parallella the Kickstarter that keeps suprising

Problemchild

Parallella is the $99 Eval board for Adapteva's highly parallel computing chip that they have been recently funding under kickstarter. The good news is that they have reached critical and even starting to take orders for non-kickstar...
- 2 Aug 2013
WLW's 500,000 Watt Transmitter -Old School Big Power

Problemchild

Had this in my "to watch queue" for a while figured that this well put together video on Pre-war Power RF wouldbe interesting to folks who wanted to see what "plumbing" in the day really looked like and how it pushed the envelopeof technology a...
- 2 Aug 2013
BASH or die. Learn scripting for an easy life

Problemchild

Need to automate a task or been typing that same command again fro the 19 th time or fancy doing a Cron job like a professional.Most Linux users will at some time need to learn to write scripts to do their day to day tasks and it's just as important ...
- 23 Jul 2013
Optical Localization to 0.1mm? No problemo!

Problemchild

Another rip from the Edinburgh Hacklab archives (Definately go there if you get a chance!!!). What do you do if you have a cheap Robot mechanism with all sorts of inaccuracy and slop but want repeatable high levels of acuracy. Optical localisati...
- 20 Jun 2013
SPLAT Hardcore RF Path Analysis

Problemchild

Ha good advice, the world is indeed NOT FLAT!!! I've had this in my bookmarks for many years and I thought I'd share it with the few HAMs who have failed to spot it.This Software makes a really good job at estimating the reception of your...
- 20 Jun 2013
Edinburgh HackLab:Arduino Workshop – Saturday 22nd June

Problemchild

I'm an occasional visitor to the Hacklab, besides their own projects they also run a number of workshops such as this one on the Arduino.Below is a copy of their post and the general HackLab link is here On Saturday 22nd June 2013 the lab ...
- 19 Jun 2013
PIC32 BV500 Kit Byvac produces BASIC on a DIL Micro

Problemchild

Byvac a small company in Yorkshire has produced this excellent little kit using the DIl varient of the PIC32 proessor which is programable in BASIC via it's on board serial port. This is a kit of parts so that over 20 Projects can be carri...
- 11 Jun 2013
Raspberry Pi bird box

Problemchild

So it looks like watching Animals is the next fashion for the PI. The BBC have created a birdbox monitoring system based on the good ol' Pi Analysing the information here: BBC Blog POST here:
- 11 Jun 2013
Marsboard 49$ Allwinner 10 Credit Card SBC

Problemchild

The Raspberry Pi has introduced a veritable Tsunami of Linux powered ARM SBCs. The latest of which is the Marsboard which is a very spunky name for an Allwinner A10 SOC powered devicewith 1GB of RAM and a Mali Graphics core. Also very usefully i...
- 10 Jun 2013
Carambola2 Linux powered WIFI module for IOT

Problemchild

Just had the need to work on a remote lighting project and I was made aware of these rather nice modules from 8 Devices.The Carambola2 is based on the Atheros AR9331 chipset with 64MBRAM WIFI,USB i2s,Ethernet and 23 GPIO all for 19Euros. T...
- 10 Jun 2013
Soldering kit -Great for kids of all ages

Problemchild

My nephew is totally addicted to minecraft and will continue to play until the wee small hours.I figured that this single mindedness could and should be directed some where else at least to mitigate hisblock bashing. To this end we bought a small sol...
- 7 Jun 2013
Raspberry Pi Camera for Astrophotography

Problemchild

I really didn't think the camera would be sensitive enough for a successful Astro camera and maybe for more distant objects the lack of lite/exposure time will be a problem but fear not some one has stopped talking about it and gone and done it ...
- 6 Jun 2013
EdX -Top University Courses Freely Available

Problemchild

EdX is apparently celebrating their First Birthday and as part of the celebration brough out a new range of coursesIncluding One on Solar Energy from Delft university. www.youtube.com/watch I've done the Electronics Course provided by MIT a...
- 6 Jun 2013
Human's aren't Monsters ...So say the Robots

Problemchild

Just taken a look at Pat Kelly's blog it had a nice little entry about people been nice.I like that we need more of this and less doom and gloom!! I was reminded of a project a few years ago where students were given the problem of building a r...
- 5 Jun 2013
QRP Computing

Problemchild

With the Raspberry Pi and other SBCs been used to drive SDR radios of all varieties it's interesting to see that this computing has also been used for QRP (Low power) Ham Radio . A rather interesting mailing list has popped up with&nb...
- 5 Jun 2013
A to B a Parcel that records it's Journey

Problemchild

I saw this some time ago and was quite taken with just how much crude wiring you can put in a parcel and stillnot have the device detected on the X-Ray machine . Basically if you have ever wondered what happens to your parcelafter you take...
- 4 Jun 2013
HAckers in Spaaaaaace

Problemchild

Pitty I cant get the title read out in the same way as the famous Pigs In Space but we're close I was rather taken with LondonHacker Space's Starship Simulator, even more so now they built it intoa caravan and are driving it around the co...
- 4 Jun 2013
ODROID U2 Cases

Problemchild

The Odroids in general are absolutely awesome and the Odroid U2 is even more so. Only 70mm on side with a Quad core 1.7GHZSamsumg Exynos 4412 Prime, 2GB RAM.A full sized RJ45 10/100 NIC and 2 USB ports just finish off the micro HDMI and Audio o...
- 29 May 2013
Hacking Tamagotchi

Problemchild

I love it when folk spend incredible time and patience to break in to the smallest inane things.Yeah just how does widget XYZ work anyway ? Where is that Diagnostic port etc.Any way Natalie is well up there with her adventures hacking in to all thing...
- 27 May 2013
Video Editing on Linux OpenShot

Problemchild

When you think of the applications that you as a linux user would really find useful you generally get the usual fewof Visio/Photoshop/MS Project and a few others you get most of the fuctionality in some linux programs but it isn't the same.Vid...
- 26 May 2013
Manga Robotics

Problemchild

OK it's Japanese and I'm non too sure what on earth they are on about.(Hopefuly nothing too Fraudian!!! ) I just like it from their odd association with technology. Prepare to get really excited about robotics. www.youtube.com/watch A...
- 26 May 2013
User Groups win big with O'Reilly

Problemchild

Are you an organiser for a Usergroup be that Linux/Windows or some programming language ?If so then you could be like us an take benefit from O'Reilly's User Group scheme! I applied through their online portal here and a few weeks la...
- 9 May 2013