New Solarcell, the SCC2433a

Let's start 2011 by promoting a worthwhile event sponsored by one of our suppliers, SparkFun. Tomorrow is their 2nd "Free Day". Last year's event pretty much crashed their servers (we sent flowers of condolence). This year, they're going about it a bit wiser, offering several ways to taking advantage of their $150,000 give-away. We're big […]

Now we definitely need these. Spring had died somewhere along the way up north, so sunlight in pills would be awesome. Awesome Tiny Lasercut Robots ...made out of bamboo and fluorescent acrylic (By Junichi Tsuneoka of CHIBIPOCKET, via Ponoko). 3D Printed Candles A likeness of oneself in a shape of a candle - who wouldn't […]

Unlike Sparkfun, who actually manage to find fake Atmel ICs, we just get strange batches. The Atmel ATMega328 is the power behind the Arduino/Freeduino/*duino, and we have to set up a programming system to burn the venerable Arduino Bootloader into these chips. We normally use an AVR STK500 in HVSP (high voltage serial programming) mode, […]

As Panasonic is no longer manufacturing their line of Sunceram solar cells, we've been on the hunt for suitable replacements. Here's our first find - the SCC3733! It's a polycrystaline cell in an epoxy casing, so it's a bit heavier, but much, much less prone to breaking or burning off of the solder-pads. It's also […]