Let’s document here the designs and PCBs that were developed during Pre-GOSH and GOSH 2018 in Shenzhen. Including sources where to find the parts in Huaqiangbei :-).
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DVDBreakout - A simple breakout board to control the laser and the two coils of an Optical Laser Pick-up Unit
The source for the DVDBreakout Board that I designed at SteamHead can be found here:
Designed the board to look scientific.
The board can power the laser diode of a DVD burner with a constant current set by the “Laser” potentiometer.
The two coils can be moved left and right or up and down with the potentiometers.
The circuit can be used to make a simple laser projection microscope.
The circuit is tested and working. I use 4 AA (or AAA) batteries to power it. For the REF voltage I pick 1/2 of the full voltage from the battery holder directly with an extra wire.
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GCodeToAnalog: grbl-arduino_micro based Gcode to Analog converter circuit and code.
aka the Fly.
This circuit basically adds 4 analogue outputs to the Arduino Micro. With the grbl-arduino_micro-analog code any GCode command sent to the circuit by USB-Serial port will be translated into X, Y and Z analogue signals.
This circuit can turn any old XY-Ploter into a GCode pen plotter.
PCB design files and arduino code (upload hex file) can be found here:
Front side with banana plug holders and arduino micro.
Back side of PCB designed at SteamHead Hackerspace.
Trying out different plugs.
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Really cool to see more documentation on these. What do you think Kitspace needs for you to put them up there as the first step rather than GitHub only?
I know sorting out the required bill of materials is still too cumbersome. Could you do me a favor and try out bom-builder.kitspace.org to select parts for your bill of materials? You can either open your .kicad_pcb files in there or export to .tsv using one of these output scripts and then open that. Happy to jump on a video chat or something else to help you out with it.
Hi Kaspar
Yes, building the BOM is still an issue. Selecting the parts - in particular the specific ones, not standard resistors and capacitors - is a shitty work. And then you need to be sure that the parts are in deed the correct one. When suppliers change, or parts get outdated you need to also update these lists and allways find the best prices. From what I can see there is almost no project on kitspace that is really “one click shopping” ready at the moment. My suggestion would be that I can “sign up” my hardware github project to kitspace and that then you go ahead and do the work of building the BOM. Once the list is ready you give me the “ok” and I can buy the tested kit through your website, directly from the suppliers - or even get a PCB-A delivered in the quantity I want. 
I do kind of do this occasionally for projects. You are just shifting the work to someone else though and that someone knows less about your project than you do.
Nevertheless, here is a screencast of going through the process using the Kitspace tool. I had to make some guesses on certain parts (which is why it would be better if you did this). It took about 7 minutes and most of that seemed to be spent deleting lines (need to make that easier).
This results in: DVDBreakOut-BOM.csv
At this point, none of the info we I added to the BOM would go out of date unless you make changes to the design. You can even use KiField to keep the design and BOM in sync.
The goal of Kitspace is to allow 1-click orders from a BOM like this. So I would be happy to add projects with this minimal BOM. For the time being though we need to select retailer parts to buy them so I went ahead and selected some Digikey parts:
Results in: DVDBreakOut-BOM-Digikey.csv
I still like the BOM as service idea, but it seems like much more work on Kitspace’s side and not everyone would be willing to pay for it.
LOL, well done Kaspar - You’ve got the job!
Can you do the AnalgoToGCode too? And send me pull requests so that everything shows up on Kitspace.
I was hoping to encourage you to use bom-builder.kitspace.org yourself. You can open your .kicad_pcb files directly and make sure the part selections are correct (which you would have to do for my pull-request anyway). Also, it scales better than Kaspar as a service.
Badge with blinking SMD LEDs that make sound
#LEDhacking: the sound is generated by the internal chip of the leds. By heating the led with a lighter (or other heat source) the sound of the badge can be changed.
Find the open source files here (and soon on Kitspace)
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As you said, it seems like much more work and not everyone would be willing to pay for it… maybe you want to integrate a feature to choose a certain amount of money from the order (%) goes to the designer and the BOM builder of the circuit.
I think it’s a good idea too, but we need to add a lot of other functionality first (like actual accounts, uploads without Git).
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This is the DashCam Microscope that I brought to GOSH Shenzhen. It’s a working prototype that demonstrates how to make a microscope with LCD display only from the parts of of car dash cam for a cost of <15$.
The cam is portable and does not need a computer to run. It’s battery powered and can even record pictures and videos to an SD card.
The design is not finished in that it is difficult to access the buttons. Generally we noticed in the Shenzhen GOSHLab, that there are many different models of Car/Dash Cams and that they are all slightly different.
This is the exact model I used for the prototype:
Here the design files for laser cutting this model.
File in pdf format:
http:/www.gaudi.ch/GaudiLabs/wp-content/uploads/DashMicroscope_V0.5.pdf
In the GOSH DashCam Microscope workshop we were using this kind of camera - it has a longer cable to the camera-sensor. However the display cable seemed to be quite delicate to break.
@bengtsjolen and I designed a enclosure for this model. Bengt, can you share it here?
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hi @kaspar,
i would love to see a #tag function on Kitspace. so i could display a selection of the shared hardware only.
like #kitsprint-Yogya… #synthesizers, #blinkeshit etc…
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