Discover Top Posts Tagged with #hardwaredevelopment

Espressif programmer test success! 💻✨🔧

While developing boards, there are oftentimes we want to program ESP chips without going through the onboard USB port; this adapter will help us (and others) do that! It has a CP2102N USB-serial chip

https://www.digikey.com/short/bm7n3p5z

...with RX/TX signal LEDs and two transistors wired up to the DTR/RTS line for the 'esptool standard' reset procedure technique. The output IO, plus a 3.3V 500mA regulated output, is available on a socket header, so you can plug wires in for quick programming and debugging. You can use this for everything from an ESP8266 up to the ESP32-P4! Here, we are testing it with a HUZZAH ESP8266 breakout board

Add Internet to your next project with an adorable, bite-sized WiFi microcontroller, at a price you like! The ESP8266 processor from Espress

...one of our first Espressif chipset products.

TLV320DAC3100 take 2 🎧🔊

After much wrasslin’ with the TLV320DAC3100, we finally have a library that properly configures the PLL and sets up both the headphone and speaker output well enough. However, we made a mistake with the headphone wiring, accidentally swapping ground and mic, and we’re experiencing some noise in the headphones when the Class D speaker output is active.

We’re rerouting the board to separate the speaker outputs from the TRRS jack to address this. While at it, we’re also exposing the MICDET and bias pins—interestingly, the mic detects can double as a potentiometer input for volume control. The board grew by 50 mils, but we believe this version is the one. After testing, it should be ready for sale.

We’re excited to get this board dialed in since we plan to use this chip in several designs!

We designed and prototyped an RP2350 Metro a few months ago, and it worked OK, but we were really short on pins, which meant a lot of annoying compromises - so we ended up only fabbing the RP2350 Feather to start. With that design flying off the shelves, It's time to revisit the Metro. We wanted to jam-pack this design, and with the extra GPIO on the B we have plenty of peripherals: the 22-pin HSTX for DVI output, Stemma QT port, NeoPixel, JST 3-SH SWD debug port, 16MB flash, an extra spot for PSRAM, MicroSD card with SPI or SDIO connections, and 5V buck converter that can give us 2 Amp easily, which we'll need since we also have a USB Host port pinout for connecting USB peripherals. We even managed to get a couple of niceties like switchable power for the USB host power, a USB boot button as user input, and an SD card detect GPIO.

Prototype of a Compute Module backpack ready! ⚡🎒

OK, our 10164227-1004A1RLF (https://www.digikey.com/short/3z8mb49f) Compute Module connectors came in, so we're ready to fab this prototype of our Compute Module 4 or 5 backpack. Timon updated it to have an EYESPI connector to bring out some GPIO's and make it easy to connect small displays. There's so much packed on here; we're worried about how we're going to make a test jig for so many connectors! We may need to use an IO multiplexer to address so many pins with a microcontroller - while using a CM5 to do the test sounds 'fun,' it would not be good to have such a delicate board used for testing hundreds or thousands of these in the fabrication department.

More Sparkle Motion testing - 24V Neon Neopixel Tubes ✨🌈

This chonky neopixel tube is a treat with full, smooth color all the way around - but it's also a real pain to drive, given it requires 24V power. Or at least it would be if we didn't have this Sparkle Motion

Coming soon! We're designing a board for using WLED - and we want to make like the bestest board in the wholeworld. Our resident me

board we are testing! With USB PD support, it's easy to plug the board into a USB C laptop power supply that can provide 20V at up to 5A - even though it's under 24V, we've found the LEDs are just as bright. Looks great, we're going to keep testing and get these boards ordered, hopefully before the year's end!

DAC7578 is a 12-bit octal output DAC 🔊📊🔗

Folks love our various digital-to-analog converter boards (https://www.adafruit.com/search?q=dac). We've got a few single channels and a quad (https://www.adafruit.com/product/4470) - but what about an octal DAC? The DAC7578 (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/base-product/texas-instruments/296/DAC7578/80464) is I2C controlled, so it is easy to integrate anywhere, and 8 outputs that can be 0-5VDC. we spun up a quick breakout board so we could try it out.

#adafruit #DAC7578 #octal #digitalanalog #octaldac #electronics #circuitdesign #breakoutboard #i2ccontrol #voltageoutput #techinnovation #engineering #hardwaredevelopment

Raspberry Pi 5 / RP1 chip support for Neopixels with Python bindings coming soon 🎉💡🖥️🌈🐍

Hot off the PIO-presses, our resident Jepler created a Python binding for the Raspberry Pi 5 that lets us use the RP1 chip

Raspberry Pi 5 is our first flagship product to make use of silicon designed in-house here at Raspberry Pi: the RP1 I/O controller.

on the 5/500 series boards to drive Neopixels using PIO. This is great because we can now use Neopixels

Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits : NeoPixels - Tools Gift Certificates Arduino Cables Sensors LEDs Books Break

and friends on the latest Pi boards, and we can use any pin because PIO is not limited by underlying peripherals. You do need the latest kernel and firmware, so it is not quite ready for prime-time, but once piolib

A collection of scripts and simple applications. Contribute to raspberrypi/utils development by creating an account on GitHub.

is more readily available, we'll be able to have folks test this out.

We're doing 8 days of light-filled designs to wrap up this year. We started with the Sparkle Motion Mini

mini Sparkle Motion prototype - a tiny, fully-featured WLED board ✨🔌📏💡🌈

, which can drive thousands of shimmering RGB LEDs. Then, we did the Sparkle Motion stick, a USB-pluggable version

Festival of Lights... A 'USB Stick' Sparkle Motion WLED driver ✨💡🔌🌟

On the third night, a 1.28" round TFT display

Festival of Lights - 1.28" Round TFT display 🔵🎉

, and on the fourth a 1.8" round TFT with captouch overlay

Festival of Lights - Night #4 1.8" Round TFT with Captouch ✨💡📲👈🎨 #electronics #rounddisplays

On the fifth night, a tiny 0.85" TFT display

Festival of lights - night #5 0.85" 128x128 TFT breakout 🎆🌈 #electronics

came to life. We took a little break on the sixth night since we were doing a lot of Sparkle Motion testing

Testing Sparkle Motion - Fuse for Views ⚡🎆 youtu.be/tqJoDZ9gpao #electronics https://youtu.be/tqJoDZ9gpao

and did a quick revision of our NeoRGB

On the penultimate night and New Year's Eve, we're making a quick Qwiic board—this is an I2C breakout for transparent OLED displays. We've had the display in our 'in progress' bin for a few years but finally sat down to finish it tonight. We're experimenting with a wrap-around setup for the FPC and a cutout for the display for mounting. We'll see how it goes!