Collaborate Disseminate
Compared to through-hole construction, inspecting SMD construction is a whole other game. Things you thought were small before are almost invisible now, and making sure solder got where it’s supposed …read more Continue reading Tiny Prisms Let You See What Lies Beneath a BGA Chip
When you are responsible for maintaining devices at a client’s location, software tools like remote desktop and SSH are great, but sometimes they are not enough. For some problems, you …read more Continue reading Telepresence Robot For “Doing The Rounds”
Skydio only just recently announced its expansion into the enterprise and commercial market with hardware and software tools for its autonomous drone technology, and now it’s taking the lid off a brand new big partnership with one commercial partner. Skydio will work with EagleView to deploy automated residential roof inspection using Skydio drones, with service […] Continue reading Skydio partners with EagleView for autonomous residential roof inspections via drone
Gravity is a nice thing to have most of the time, but sometimes it would be nice to be able to ignore it for certain applications. Rock climbing, for example, would be much easier, as would performing bridge inspections in the way that a group of mechanical engineering cadets (students) …read more
Join us on Wednesday, April 15 at noon Pacific for the PCB Bring-Up Hack Chat with Mihir Shah and Liam Cadigan!
The printed circuit design process is pretty unique among manufacturing processes. Chances are pretty good that except for possibly a breadboard prototype, the circuit that sits before you after …read more
Paul will talk about the challenges of inheriting someone else’s code. Paul will discuss 5 tips: Use an IDE, Variable Usage, Jump To Implementation and Declaration, Global Search, and Inspection. I’ve spent the past few weeks updating s… Continue reading Inheriting Someone Else’s Code
With surface-mount technology pushing the size of components ever smaller, even the most eagle-eyed among us needs some kind of optical assistance to do PCB work. Lots of microscopes have digital cameras too, which can be a big help – unless the camera fights you.
Faced With a camera whose idea of autofocus targets on didn’t quite coincide with his, [Scott M. Baker] took matters into his own hands – foot, actually – by replacing mouse inputs to the camera with an outboard controller. His particular camera’s autofocus can be turned off, but only via mouse clicks on the camera’s …read more
Continue reading Arduino Provides Hands-Free Focus for Digital Inspection Scope
When it comes to inspection of printed circuits, most of us rely on the Mark I eyeball to see how we did with the soldering iron or reflow oven. And even when we need the help of some kind of microscope, our inspections are still firmly in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Pushing the frequency up a few orders of magnitude and inspecting PCBs with X-rays is a thing, though, and can reveal so much more than what the eye can see.
Unlike most of us, [Tom Anderson] has access to X-ray inspection equipment in the course of …read more
Continue reading Seeing a Webcam’s PCBs in a Whole Different Light
[Nico71] works for a company that makes industrial CT scanners. These x-ray machines look inside a piece of equipment, allowing operators to verify assembly and to inspect for material integrity. It also allowed [Nico71] the opportunity to scan a LEGO servo he had lying around, and which no longer worked. The resulting images look fantastic, and really allow you to look into a closed system and pick apart how it works or why it’s not working. In this case, you can see one of the wires has been damaged.
[Nico71] plans to scan a bunch of LEGO components, comparing (for …read more
Engineering student [Varun Suresh] designed his SafeRanger rover to inspect oil and gas power plants for abnormal temperatures as well as gas leaks. The rover explores critical areas of the factory, and data is sent to a control center for analysis.
[Varun] built his robot around a Devastator chassis kit from DFRobot, and equipped it with a FLIR Lepton thermal camera and an MQ2 gas sensor, both monitored by a Raspberry Pi. The twin brushless DC motors are controlled by an L293D motor driver IC in conjunction with an Arduino Nano; steering is accomplished with an HC-05 Bluetooth module and …read more
Continue reading Hackaday Prize Entry: SafeRanger, a Roving Power Plant Monitor
