Tag: electronics

CircuitLab: Google Docs for circuits

CircuitLab is an online circuit design tool. This is my new favorite way to jot down circuits. The interface is clean and simple and even has some test/simulation facilities. It also has a sharing/GoogleDocs…



Optical recognition of resistor codes

This is an iOS/iPhone app that uses the camera to optically recognize resistor color code bands. I find this interesting because I tried writing something like this one time. I couldn’t sleep at 3am after a…



No homemade cables

One of Josh Trachtenberg’s rules that I have adopted is “No Homemade Cables”. It’s so natural to think that this is the best solution to hook two…



Streamlined & simple prototyping to custom PCB

Fritzing is PCB design software (EDA) in the spirit of Arduino and Processing. It’s open source, cross-platform, streamlined, and simple to use. It doesn’t do simulations, but you can lay out your circuit in a GUI that looks like a prototyping board, then move…



Synchronizing multiple computers for experiments

In many rigs, multiple computers are used, and they need to talk to each other. For example, one computer handles the…



Project enclosures

Here are some ideas for project enclosures. The stock enclosures from Mouser, Digikey, and others are generally serviceable, but are rarely the perfect size. In addition, making the required cutouts can be inconvenient. Here are a couple of alternatives.



Draw schematics online

DrawSCH lets you draw schematics online, in a browser window, and then get JPGs or PNGs emailed to you. (link)

PDF export is in the works, but the SVG export works fine, if you want a vector file. Handy.

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iPad Oscilloscope

To revisit an earlier post on mini-oscilloscopes, how about an iPad oscilloscope?

It’s not available just yet, but Oscium will soon start selling the iMSO-104, a peripheral add-on for the iPad, iPhone,…



Wireless

I recently returned from my private island in the Maldives. Like most of the inhabited islands, it has no physical links…



Mini oscilloscopes

Seeed Studio repurposed parts for cheap MP3 players and made a production miniature oscilloscope, the DSO nano. I like this small tool and bought one of the first iterations (see image…



Arduino – a simple microcontroller

Arduino is a popular, cheap (around 25 USD), and open source microcontroller platform. We use them all over the lab. Students can learn to program them very quickly, they’re versatile, and there is…



Multichannel recording systems

This is just a quick list of manufacturers/vendors of multielectrode recording hardware, and their roots. Unsurprisingly, they were almost all started by neurophysiologists. It’s interesting how diverse they are, they each seem to have…



Outfitting a lab on the cheap

A friend of mine does a lot of molecular biology and keeps an incubator at home so she can run a reaction and stop it some time at night without having to make a…



Capacitive touch sensors

We covered a simple lickometer circuit previously. Another useful interface is a capacitive touch sensor. In contrast to light gate sensors, there are no extra photons floating around that could disturb an…



Simple blue laser kit